1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus such as copying machine or printer, a position information management system which manages a position on a medium for use in the image forming apparatus, and so forth.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, notice is taken of a technique with which a user writes a character or depicts a picture on a special sheet of paper printed with fine dots, and he/she transfers the data of, e.g., the character written on the sheet of paper, to a personal computer, a portable telephone or the like, whereby the content can be saved or transmitted by mail. With the technique, the small dots are printed on the special sheet of paper at intervals of, for example, about 0.3 mm, and they are formed so as to depict different patterns in all individual grids of predetermined size by way of example. The position of, e.g., the character written on the special sheet of paper can be specified by reading the dots with, for example, a dedicated pen which has a built-in digital camera, so that the character or the like can be utilized as electronic information.
Here, a related-art technique is one wherein an electronic document, and a sheet of paper printed with the electronic document are associated beforehand, and a character or the like written on the sheet of paper, and the electronic document are merged. Concretely, the identification information of the page of the electronic document, and position information on the sheet of paper are embedded in a code image represented by, for example, a two-dimensional code capable of machine reading, and they are printed in superposition on the electronic document by a printer or the like. Subsequently, using a scanner of pen type, a handwritten operation on a printed document and the partial image of a handwritten location are successively acquired from the printed document. Besides, the identification information of the page of the electronic document and the plurality of position information items of the partial image on the printed document are detected by analyzing the acquired image. Thereafter, the page of the original electronic document is identified using the detected identification information, and contents handwritten on the printed document are reproduced using the plurality of position information items, whereby the handwritten contents can be added to the page of the original electronic document.
Besides, another related-art technique is one wherein a fixed form is printed on a sheet of Anoto paper, and an item within the fixed form is designated, whereby detailed information on the item can be referred to. Concretely, information for identifying the item on the sheet of paper, and the detailed information of the item are managed in association beforehand, and the detailed information on the item which a user has read by a reading device is transmitted to a user terminal.
Meanwhile, when printing an electronic document on a medium such as paper, various print conditions are designated. Among them, there is a print condition concerning layout. By way of example, scale-down or N-up (printing in which N pages of the electronic document are allocated within one page of the sheet of paper) is performed in order to save the medium. Also, scale-up is selected in order that a character or the like printed on the medium may become legible.
Such a print layout, however, is not considered in the related art described above. More specifically, the service can be provided only when the electronic document is outputted to the medium in a layout for ordinary use (a layout in which one page of the electronic document is simply allocated to one page of the medium), and there has been the problem that the service cannot be provided by outputting the electronic document to the medium in a free layout.
There has also been the problem that, in case of so-called “patching” in which parts of an image printed on a medium are clipped and then pasted on another medium, the relations between the clipped fragments and electronic documents being sources are liable to be lost.